Alixander v. Group Health of Washington

ORDER DENYING MOTION TO DISMISS OR, IN THE
ALTERNATIVE, COMPEL ARBITRATION

ROBERT
S. LASNIK UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE.

This
matter comes before the Court on “Defendant's Rule
12(c) Motion to Dismiss, or in the Alternative, to Compel
Arbitration.” Dkt. # 15. Defendant argues that
plaintiff's statutory discrimination and failure to
accommodate claims are preempted under § 301 of the
Labor Management Relations Act and/or that they are subject
to arbitration under the Grievance Settlement Agreement
negotiated between defendant and plaintiff's union
representative. Having reviewed the memoranda, declarations,
and exhibits submitted by the parties, [1] the Court finds
as follows:

The
Court assumes, for purposes of this motion, that the
Grievance Settlement Agreement is a “contract[] between
an employer and a labor organization representing employees
in an industry affecting commerce” for purposes of
§ 301(a). Plaintiff has not, however, triggered §
301 preemption by initiating a suit for violation of that
contract. Plaintiff seeks to vindicate rights and protections
afforded by state and federal anti-discrimination statutes.
As a general matter, statutory claims that are independent of
the contract between the employer and union are not preempted
by § 301 and may, in fact, be litigated in parallel with
a grievance for violation of the collective bargaining
agreement, even where the claims arise out of the same
events. See Valles v. Ivy Hill Corp., 410 F.3d 1071,
1076 (9th Cir. 2005) (“A claim brought in state court
on the basis of a state-law right that is independent of
rights under the collective-bargaining agreement[] will not
be preempted, even if a grievance arising from precisely the
same set of facts could be pursued.”) (internal
quotation marks and citation omitted).

Section
301 does not only preempt claims that are based on a
violation of the collective bargaining agreement, however. It
also preempts independent statutory and common law claims
that are “substantially dependent on analysis of the
collective bargaining agreement.” Burnside v.
Kiewit Pac. Corp., 491 F.3d 1053, 1059 (9th Cir. 2007).
Section 301 preemption “has sprouted modestly” to
subsume non-contract claims that would put the Court in a
position of having to determine questions relating to what
the parties to a labor agreement agreed or what legal
consequences were intended to flow from breaches of the
agreement or which are nominally tort claims but, in reality,
are based on alleged breaches of duties created in the
collective bargaining agreement. Livadas v.
Bradshaw, 512 U.S. 107, 122-23 (1994). “When the
meaning of contract terms is not the subject of dispute, the
bare fact that a collective-bargaining agreement will be
consulted in the course of state-law litigation plainly does
not require the claim to be extinguished.” Id.
at 124. See also Kobold v. Good Samaritan Reg'l Med.
Ctr., 832 F.3d 1024, 1033 (9th Cir. 2016) (a statutory
claim is not substantially dependent on the terms of a
collective bargaining agreement if the Court merely has to
look at the agreement, rather than interpret or construe it,
to resolve the dispute).

Defendant
argues that resolving plaintiff's statutory claims will
require interpretation of the Grievance Settlement Agreement
to see if the arbitration provision applies to this dispute.
While defendant has articulated a disagreement involving the
contract between the employer and the union, a glance at the
settlement agreement shows that the issue defendant raises is
not reasonably in dispute. “[A]rbitration is a matter
of contract” and “arbitrators derive their
authority to resolve disputes only because the parties have
agreed in advance to submit such grievances to
arbitration.” AT&T Techs., Inc. v. Commc'ns
Workers, 475 U.S. 643, 648-49 (1986). There is no
indication in the language of the Grievance Settlement
Agreement that the parties intended to settle, release, or
arbitrate plaintiff's statutory claims. The contract
identifies two grievances, both of which were based on
alleged violations of the collective bargaining agreement
governing plaintiff's employment. Defendant and the union
clearly stated their intent “to fully resolve Grievance
No. 1 and Grievance No. 2, ” i.e.,
plaintiff's complaints of violation of the collective
bargaining agreement. The union agreed to withdraw the
grievances with prejudice in exchange for a lump sum payment
to plaintiff (and certain additional non-monetary benefits).
There is no release of claims other than that subsumed in the
withdrawal of the grievances with prejudice. The Grievance
Settlement Agreement is declared to be “the entire
agreement of the Parties, ” and any dispute arising
thereunder “shall be subject to Arbitration.”
Dkt. # 17 at 3. Defendant acknowledges that the agreement
“does not contain any explicit language regarding a
full and final resolution of [p]laintiff's gender
discrimination and failure to accommodate claims . . .
.” Dkt. # 15 at 8. Its unsupported insistence that it
meant to settle the state and federal statutory claims and
that the settlement agreement therefore means what it does
not say is not enough to put the terms of the collective
bargaining agreement in dispute. A review of the agreement
itself shows that there was no agreement to arbitrate
plaintiff's statutory claims.[2]

In the
alternative, defendant argues that this matter must be
referred to arbitration so that the arbitrator, rather than
the Court, can determine whether there was an agreement to
arbitrate. Such a procedure is not consistent with the
governing law. Before a matter will be forced into
arbitration, the Court must determine (a) whether a valid
agreement to arbitrate exists and (b) whether a particular
dispute falls within the scope of the agreement. United
Steelworkers of Am. v. Warrior & Gulf, 363 U.S. 574,
582-83 (1960). There is an agreement to arbitrate disputes
arising under the Grievance Settlement Agreement, but, as
discussed above, plaintiff's statutory claims do not fall
within the scope of that agreement. Because “it may be
said with positive assurance that the arbitration clause is
not susceptible of an interpretation that covers the asserted
dispute, ” defendant's alternative request that the
Court compel arbitration is denied. Cumberland
Typographical Union 244 v. The Times, 943 F.2d 401, 404
(4th Cir. 1991).

For all
of the foregoing reasons, defendant's motion to dismiss
or, in the alternative, to compel arbitration (Dkt. # 15) is
DENIED.

---------

Notes:

[1] This matter can be resolved on the
papers submitted. Plaintiff's request for oral argument
is DENIED.

[2] Defendant's shock that plaintiff
would be so bold as to claim a right to pursue her state and
federal statutory claims after having resolved her
contractual claims through the grievance process (Dkt. # 22
at 3) is hardly credible given the governing case law and the
language of the Grievance Settlement Agreement. If the Court
were to consider the extrinsic evidence regarding the
parties' intent at the time the settlement agreement was
signed, defendant's espoused position would be
sanctionable. Because the inapplicability of § 301
...

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